Thursday, June 9, 2016

Adam Tensta: The cartel gave voice to people on the margins – Metro

One of Sweden’s most influential groups laid to rest today.

I’m talking of course about the cartel, if the front man SEBBE STAXX and visionary who is also the founder Leo “Chinese” Carmona. Since 2008, when the vision came to life, the group has been a backbone of the Swedish hip hop. Has anyone given any had an ear to culture in recent years, it can not have escaped the group.

Today cartel release his last album, appropriately titled final submissions. I go into the cartel’s FB page where Leo Carmona recently written a post that has taken the followers by storm. A hastily dismissed that tells Sebbe has dropped out of the cartel and that all the cartel gigs are canceled for all time, this just weeks before the final submissions would be released.

I scroll down the post and see that the comment field is overflowing with grief . Greetings from people who say that the cartel’s music has got them to get through the day, helped them out of depression, and even saved their lives. Comments that tells us that a whole generation voice just silenced. I also know of despair and concern in tone, someone writes – who will speak to us now? At that comment, I carry with me the rest out the day.

Although I personally have not heard that much of the cartel’s music so I understand how much music can mean, and why the cartel has become so influential. With their depiction of reality, the group became a voluntary or involuntary voice to a marginalized group of people who had not been represented by anyone before. A group of people who recognized themselves in the cartel’s history and were more in number than any previously imagined.

The cartel’s anti-establishment had finally triumphed. After three albums, a theater production, documentaries and books, so you can not deny the cartel’s firepower. I want to draw a direct parallel to Brother Daniel, and what they came to mean both the music scene and its listeners.